


Mending the Web

by keshwyn



Series: Hearth Sorcery [2]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: But it's not a magic bullet, Gen, Implied/Referenced Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Tea Is Always A Good Idea, Therapy is effective, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 12:03:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18498586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keshwyn/pseuds/keshwyn
Summary: Before Yue can start organizing the repair of the New York Sanctum Sanctorum, she has to get all the damage cleared.  A sling ring is terrific when moving heavy objects, but the caster has to know where they're going first.  Yue is from Hong Kong, but there are local resources she can draw on, if she remembers they are there.





	Mending the Web

_ A Seneschal is like a spider, _ Li Wei had once told her.   _ She sits at the center of the web, and feels the tremble of change anywhere across her domain, but she does not seek to control what is beyond that space. _

"My web is a mess, Li Wei," Yue muttered, looking at the mound of garbage bags piled by the back door.  And that was just the stuff that was a wreck in the kitchen She hadn't even half inventoried the first floor of all of the various detritus that was beyond her ability or inclination to mend ( _ What tasteless Sorcerer thought an avocado-green overstuffed velour armchair was a good idea anyway? _ ) but she was rapidly running out of mental capacity to keep track of it all.  And she knew better than to just say, "I'll deal with it later." That was how the feng shui of the Sanctum got damaged and let in nasty little sprites that did all manner of mischief.

Yue was firmly of the opinion that later usually meant, "Now."  Or possibly, "On this well defined date when I have arranged to have all the necessary tools available and my schedule is clear so that I can do the thing," for larger tasks.  Unfortunately, this mess was big enough that there were  **going** to be sprites she had to evict later - she was fairly certain one or two were already in.

"All right, Yue, think," she thought, sitting down on the damaged kitchen counter ( _You're on the list of things to mend tomorrow first thing in the morning, _ she promised the counter and herself) and folding herself into a pose of contemplation with her mug of newly-purchased jasmine tea cradled between her fingers.

(She'd used her sling ring to visit her favorite tea shop three blocks from the Hong Kong Sanctum and stock up.)

It was all very well and good to battle entropy with magic - magic was particularly suited to battling entropy, after all! - but that power was limited by the caster's will and stamina and knowledge.  Channeling dimensional energy was not something to be done casually for someone of her ability.  _ I see now why Master Fei said I was going stale. I shouldn't be this tired this early in the day. Or maybe it's the jet lag. _

All right. So she couldn't solve the problem with magic alone.  _ Well, that's fine, I've never done that before.  So. If I were at home, dealing with a decimated Sanctum and a catastrophic mess that was beyond what I could handle myself, what would I do? _

_...I'd ask the Shrines for aid. _

Each of the three Sancta Sanctorum had subsidiary Shrines that drew their power from the strength of the Sancta, and spread the repulsion that prevented nasty things from sneaking in around the edges of the world.  It was why the loss of any of the three Sancta was such a blow. London and its associated Shrines would be cleaning up for  _ years _ for the few days the Sanctum there had been...unavailable.

The Shrines would also have area knowledge that she didn't, since they were all local.  And for all that Yue had Google, she'd been in New York for less than 48 hours. She knew it wasn't enough.  Certain ingredients just weren't something you could plug into the internet and pop down to the local bodega to pick up.

Yue hopped off the kitchen counter and took her tea into the Seneschal's office - she hadn't settled enough to call it "her office" yet, and she suspected she wouldn't for another six months or so.  But there was a laptop in there, and the WiFi router, and the ledger. It was also the only space she had finished setting to rights - she needed the books and equipment in that room to fix everything else.

Seneschal Gloria had been like Li Wei.  They both kept the passwords to the official accounts written in the back of the ledger, encrypted with a cipher - one Li Wei had given her when he sent her on her way, along with the care package of tea and firm instructions to email if she found herself stuck.  

She spread her hands across the book, thumb to thumb and palm down, then folded her fourth fingers down and twisted them across the page until the fingers touched. Golden-orange flames danced around her hands for a moment, and then the words decrypted under her touch to the page.

Passwords were something she found easy to commit to memory, like most students who had progressed beyond their fourth year of study in the Arts, but the Sancta Seneschals were, if not so much in the line of fire as the Masters, still combatants on the field.  She knew why Gloria had left these words on paper and not just in her memory. So she memorized the page, and then lifted the spell from it. Gibberish returned as she turned away to open her laptop. In a year, when she reset the passwords, they too would be written on these pages under spell-cypher, in case she too met Gloria's end.

It was a sobering thought, and put her in a grim mood.  Logging in to find 243 unread messages in the Seneschal's inbox did nothing to lift it.  Yue archived the messages without hesitation; whatever was there was either not urgent, or would be resent quickly if it was. She didn't have time for the usual trivialities a Seneschal would normally be dealing with, and it was possible that some of the messages were personal in nature; she had no desire to read a dead woman's mail.  

Then she took a deep breath and opened the compose window.

> To: kt-new-york-shrines@protonmail.com  
>  From: kt-seneschal-ny@protonmail.com  
>  Subject: New York functioning; need location images
> 
> Greetings and hope to you all.  
> 
> My name is Zhao Yue, formerly of the Hong Kong Sanctum, and currently acting seneschal of New York.
> 
> First, I wanted to let you know that someone is here other than the Master of the Sanctum, so if you have requests please send them to me.  I will see to it that he gets them as he is available.
> 
> Second, while the Sanctum's primary duties are being fulfilled, I am still learning what needs to be done to bring all of the subsidiary functions back online. If you see any gaps, let me know and I will put them in the spreadsheet that I started last night.
> 
> Finally, I need your help.  While I was tapped to act as Seneschal of New York because I was acting second to the Hong Kong Seneschal, and have experience dealing with issues at this level, I do not know New York well yet.
> 
> Could someone please send me a good image of the dump so that I can open a portal and clear the big pieces of detritus that are beyond saving (broken plaster, glass, and damaged furniture for the most part) out of the way so that we can begin repairs?
> 
> I will be contacting you in the future to ask for suggestions on where to source materials as the Master requests them, but for now, I am working on keeping the walls standing and the roof up.  If you have suggestions, I welcome them. I will do my best to answer email in a timely fashion, but I am limited in my resources for now. Please bear with me as we repair and move forward.
> 
> Peace to you,  
>  Zhao Yue, Seneschal, New York

Yue sat back, staring at the screen, having deleted perhaps a third of the words she'd put in - jokes and meaningless pleasantries, the sort of thing she'd learned as self-defense against her mother's tirades.

_ Businesslike. That's how I have to begin.  They need to know that someone is here and someone is paying attention.  Eventually, maybe we'll be friends. But for now, they just need reassurance that the world isn't going to end.  At least not today. _

She went to make herself some more tea from her rapidly dwindling stock, and do a ten minute centering meditation to make sure she didn't panic if someone sent her hate mail. When she got back, there were four messages in her inbox - and two of them had some very clear pictures of a dump.  The other two were effectively, "Oh thank the powers that be," messages, one with a additional plea that the Master please send someone to visit to the Shrine  **soon** , because they were having some fluctuations with their control spells that were beyond their ability to mitigate.

Yue forwarded the last one to Master Wong, with a note saying that she wasn't sure if the Sanctum Master needed to see this one but she was sure  **someone** did.

After that, she only had to cleanse any lingering magical residue from the broken bits.  Plaster was easy if time consuming, being largely inert and inorganic. The armchair proved unexpectedly recalcitrant about expunging the residue from its stuffing, and Yue was beginning to wonder if someone had made a relic out of the incredibly ugly piece of furniture.  Then she realized there was a susuwatari, and not a kind one either, inside it, when it threw a chunk of burned wood at her.

She promptly circled the chair with a warding circle and raised the temperature inside to 1500 degrees, which reduced the chair to ash and banished the revealed sprite.  It took more out of her than she really wanted to admit, but she finished the job by mixing the ashes liberally with salt and plaster, and dropping the whole lot into a portal she made in the floor with her sling ring.  If anyone was looking at the dump in that area, well, too bad for them. They'd probably decide it was a trick of the light, and anyway, after battling the sprite, she was too tired to care.

She wanted tea.   **Lots** of tea and  **all** of the leftover char siu dumplings she'd left in the fridge. And possibly a nap.

Staggering back to the office and its adjoining bedroom, she stopped in the kitchen to stare angrily at the pile of trash bags.  She'd forgotten them.

Her heart dropped as she heard a rustle in them that meant something - probably something unfriendly and malevolent, given the quantity of spoiled food she'd had to throw out - had taken up residence.

Then a perfectly ordinary rat poked its head out of the garbage.  Well,  **that** wasn't a magical problem, at least.  She summoned the last of her focus to create a portal under the pile, and heard a terrified squeal as the rat dropped through.  It almost made her smile - but at least it would have plenty to eat. She set the kettle to 75 degrees, tossed the dumplings in the rather alarmingly dented microwave, and slumped against the kitchen counter.

It was quite astonishing just how pleasant it was to think about nothing at all, while she waited for the microwave to beep.  Even her mother's voice was blissfully silent in her head. But then, her mother never liked rats.

Alas, when felt more than heard the sound of a portal opening somewhere behind her, the spike of adrenaline and worry shattered her calm and had her nearly sprinting to get through the office door.  Whether it was the Master of the Sanctum or just a guest come to visit with him, she didn't have the energy to face anyone else.

She left the kettle on the counter and the dumplings in the microwave, staggered into the small bedroom behind the office, and collapsed onto the bed.  The microwave beeped a moment later.

It did give her a small morale boost, though, to hear a deep voice say from the kitchen, "Sencha? And...dumplings?  How did she even know I was  **coming**?"

She fell asleep with a small smile lurking in her heart.  At least the Master of the Sanctum was fed, even if she wasn't up to facing him yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Susuwatari are the little soot sprites in Totoro and Spirited Away, but the one Yue is dealing with is rather less friendly than those. As the Hong Kong Sanctum is responsible for pretty much the entire western edge of the Pacific Rim, Yue is familiar with sprites from more than just China. (It's also why she drinks Japanese tea.)
> 
> Yue likes her Sencha a little less strong and a little more mellow, so she brews it at 75 Celsius (167 Farenheit) and she's from Hong Kong, so she measures her temperatures in Celsius by default.


End file.
